Tributes paid to ‘doyenne of theatre critics’ Blanche Marvin who has died aged 100
Tributes have been paid to theatre critic Blanche Marvin, who has died aged 100.
Marvin, the founder of the Empty Space Peter Brook Awards, started her career as an actor in New York and became a friend of Tennessee Williams, going on to claim the playwright named Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire after her.
In more recent years, she was known for being a theatre critic and was going to the theatre most evenings well into her 90s.
Critic Dominic Cavendish described her as “an extraordinary woman and a true force of nature”, while fellow writer Alun Hood called her an “inspiration to critics and theatre bloggers”.
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Theatre PR Kevin Wilson called her a “doyenne of theatre critics and a champion of fringe theatre”.
In 2010, Marvin was awarded an MBE for services to theatre in that year’s birthday honours list.
Marvin founded the Empty Space Peter Brook Awards in 1989, which ran until 2017 and celebrated smaller fringe venues with little or no public funding. The award was revived in 2023 by the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards.
Mark Shenton paid tribute on social media, saying her legacy would live on “in all the people she nurtured and encouraged”.
Speaking to Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs in 2012, Marvin reflected on getting older and said: “I have found age the most thrilling thing in the world – there’s such a sense of freedom, and I can get away with things I could never get away with before.”
She died just a few days before she was to turn 101 on January 17.
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